Dan Meehan Solution

count.rb

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+class Counter
+
+  def initialize text
+    @text = text
+  end
+
+  def count
+    str = @text.downcase
+    words = []
+
+    # Special case to handle first - detect all cases of ' & ' as a word
+    ampersands = str.scan(/ & /).size
+    ampersands.times { words << '&' }
+
+    # Remove non-word characters, then split on whitespace to get words
+    str.gsub!(/[^a-zA-Z0-9']/, ' ')
+    words.concat(str.split)
+
+    # Count occurrences of each word
+    counts = Hash.new(0)
+    words.each { |w| counts[w] += 1 }
+    counts.sort_by { |k, v| v }.reverse
+  end
+end
+
+text = File.open('speech.txt', 'r').read
+counter = Counter.new(text)
+counter.count.each { |w| print "#{w[0]} - #{w[1]}\n" }